Connectedness of COVID vaccination with economic policy uncertainty, oil, bonds, and sectoral equity markets: evidence from the US

Abstract

We examine the connectedness of the COVID vaccination with the economic policy uncertainty, oil, bonds, and sectoral equity markets in the US within time and frequency domain. The wavelet-based findings show the positive impact of COVID vaccination on the oil and sector indices over various frequency scales and periods. The vaccination is evidenced to lead the oil and sectoral equity markets. More specifically, we document strong connectedness of vaccinations with communication services, financials, health care, industrials, information technology (IT) and real estate equity sectors. However, weak interactions exist within the vaccination–IT-services and vaccination–utilities pairs. Moreover, the effect of vaccination on the Treasury bond index is negative, whereas the economic policy uncertainty shows an interchanging lead and lag relation with vaccination.